


blazing trails

by pugglemuggle



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Feelings Realization, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 00:51:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13224753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pugglemuggle/pseuds/pugglemuggle
Summary: It was an ultimatum—precise, careful, and intentional, like Oikawa always was with anything important.(Or, Oikawa confesses. Iwaizumi makes a choice.)





	blazing trails

**Author's Note:**

  * For [algebraicmutiny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/algebraicmutiny/gifts).



> A gift for the haikyuu secret santa. I hope you like it!

Oikawa had given him an ultimatum.

He hadn’t phrased it as such, but Iwaizumi knew, and Oikawa knew. Despite all appearances, Oikawa was more than smart enough to understand what he’d done, even if he tried to play it off as just another flippant comment made on the floor of Iwaizumi’s childhood bedroom. 

In a selfish, twisted way, it pissed Iwaizumi off.

Their friendship was never about trailblazing. The path behind them was well-trodden, scoured into the earth with a lifetime’s worth of footprints. It was  _ safe _ . He’d known Oikawa for as long as he could remember and this path had served them well—the path of childhood best friends, classmates, teammates, thorns in each other’s sides. Iwaizumi knew every stone on this road. But now Oikawa had shoved him off, sending him tumbling down into the wooded wilds below.

_ “I’d be yours.” _

Three words. That was all it’d taken. Iwaizumi wasn’t even sure how they got on the subject—maybe they were talking about failed dates, or future spouses, or Oikawa’s popularity with women. Even in retrospect, Oikawa’s statement seemed a little out of place, a non-sequitur.  _ I’d be yours. _ The words were said with such a casual tone and such indifferent inflection that Iwaizumi almost didn’t catch the meaning behind them—until he  _ did _ , and the floor dropped out from under him.

All at once, the room seemed very quiet. The distant sound of the cicadas and the fan whirring lazily overhead only emphasized the viscous silence that held Iwaizumi suspended, immobile. He suddenly felt like he did just before a match—sharp, hyperaware of his body, adrenaline shooting up through his veins and making his heart race. He let the silence drag on for one more impossible moment and tried to get his bearings.

“...Don’t say stupid things, dumbass,” he said, because that was the  _ only _ thing to say, wasn’t it? “People might get the wrong idea.”

_ “Iwa-chan _ ,” Oikawa chided, his voice light, but when Iwaizumi turned to look, Oikawa’s gaze held him like a vice. “Don’t assume you know which idea is the wrong one.”

It was an ultimatum—precise, careful, intentional, like Oikawa always was with anything important.

Those words were enough to keep Iwaizumi’s head spinning, even after Oikawa left, even after he laid down in bed and stared at the empty darkness of his room.  _ I’d be yours _ . He knew what it meant. Oikawa had ruthlessly torn away any other interpretation. All the same, the scene played over and over again in his head, like the last play in a lost match. 

Iwaizumi had a decision to make. That much was clear. He had to think about what Oikawa had told him and come up with a response. It was a task much easier said than done.

He did not sleep well that night.

—

Oikawa was his usual self during morning practice the next day.  _ Don’t mind, Iwa-chan, spike for me, Iwa-chan, nice serve, Iwa-can. _ His behavior was so normal that the morning felt almost surreal, as though their conversation last night had never happened, like Oikawa hadn’t....

Confessed. Oikawa had confessed to him, hadn’t he? The sooner Iwaizumi accepted that, the sooner he could begin sorting through this whole situation and find a way for them to come out the other side still friends. That’s all he wanted, really. Everything would be easier if he could just figure out how to get things back to normal.

“Watch out, Iwa-chan!” 

Iwaizumi startled and threw his arm up just in time to stop the volleyball sailing towards his face from the other side of the court. The ball hit his forearm and then bounced to the floor, rolling towards the edge of the gym. 

“I guess I need to work on my serve a bit more, eh Iwa-chan?” Oikawa smiled, jogging towards him. He scooped up the ball and then came to a stop at Iwaizumi’s side. “Though you could probably pay a little more attention.”

“Hey,” Iwaizumi protested, if only because he felt obligated to out of pride. “Don’t blame me for your shitty serves.”

“Ah, Iwa-chan is so mean to me,” Oikawa sighed. He tucked the volleyball under one arm, then raised his other hand to pat Iwaizumi’s back once, firmly. The touch seemed to linger just a little too long, and when Oikawa left, jogging back to the other end of the court, Iwaizumi swore he could still feel the warmth of Oikawa’s hand print seeping into his skin.

Why was nothing related to Oikawa ever simple?

—

Iwaizumi hadn’t meant to truly consider Oikawa’s proposition. He and Oikawa were friends, and that was all he’d ever wanted them to be. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Oikawa at practice, about the way he’d touched him—strong, steady, a little too long. Sitting at the edge of his bed, looking at the place on his floor where just twenty-four hours earlier, Oikawa had sat and  _ confessed _ , Iwaizumi was beginning to wonder if maybe he owed it to Oikawa to at least think about it. 

Him and Oikawa. They’d always been a package deal. Two boys growing up in the same neighborhood with different personalities but the same drive for success, the same need to win. 

How could they be anything other than that? Iwaizumi sighed sharply, tugging at his hair and falling back on his bed. Him and Oikawa. What was Oikawa thinking? That they’d date? That they’d be a couple? For how long? They were both going to different colleges in the spring. Why had Oikawa decided to confess to him  _ now _ , of all times?

_ Focus _ . Iwaizumi closed his eyes and tried, as seriously as he could manage, to picture himself with Oikawa in a romantic way. He pictured himself reaching out and holding Oikawa’s hand as they walked to practice, or a date of some sort perhaps. He pictured bringing Oikawa gifts like he’d seen some of the couples at their school do. He pictured getting him flowers, and walking him to class, and kissing him on the cheek—

“This is ridiculous,” Iwaizumi muttered to his empty room. He sat up and rubbed his hand over his face. This was not working. This wasn’t  _ them _ . 

What else could a romantic couple be, if it wasn’t what he’d seen time and time again on TV and in manga? 

The memory of Oikawa’s hand on his back came to mind, visceral and unbidden. He could almost feel the exact weight of his hand on his back, hear the cadence of his voice, picture the way his characteristic half-smile had looked, the way his brown eyes locked with Iwaizumi’s when he spoke to him. Iwaizumi’s chest suddenly felt weighed down, as though an invisible force was pressing on his lungs.

Casual touches—that was just what friends did. Iwaizumi enjoyed it, just as much as any friend might. It was reaffirming, a reminder that someone else was always at your side. He and Oikawa were friends, so this, perhaps, made sense. 

Then why did this conclusion seem wrong?

—

He watched Oikawa in class the next day.

His seat was right behind Oikawa’s for English. He tried to focus on the whiteboard, where the teacher was writing examples for adjective order rules. Iwaizumi really should’ve been paying attention, because there was a good chance that these exact examples would show up as questions on the exam. But he kept getting distracted by watching Oikawa’s back, watching his hand sweeping over his note sheet, the pen caught almost lazily between his fingers. Iwaizumi studied the line of his shoulders, the delicate curve of his neck, the exposed skin at his nape and the hair that swept over it. Was his skin warm there? What would Oikawa do if Iwaizumi touched him there, settled his hand at the base of his neck where the shallow bumps of his spin disappeared under the collar of his shirt?

“Iwaizumi?”

“Oh, um. Yes?”

Iwaizumi looked around him. The teacher was waiting for an answer, and his classmates were staring. In front of him, he thought he saw Oikawa pretend to hide his snicker. He frowned at the back of Oikawa’s stupid brown hair, then looked past him to the problem on the whiteboard.

“The correct adjective order is ‘seven large blue boxes.’“

“That’s correct.”

Iwaizumi was at least able to take pleasure in the way Oikawa’s laughter faded after that.

—

At the end of practice, changing after their showers, Iwaizumi watched. He knew what Oikawa looked like, but it was different now, somehow. He watched with stolen glances as Oikawa reached to pull his clean shirt out of his bag, the muscles in his arms shifting and tensing, his shoulder blades forming lines in his back. The planes of his torso were smooth and pale, and it made Iwaizumi think of a wax sculpture—perfect, untouchable.

Between them, Oikawa had always done the touching, had always been physical with his affection. Iwaizumi envied the ease with which Oikawa reached out to make contact, and had never found the same ease in all their years of friendship.

Iwaizumi had certainly never touched this part of Oikawa. He had never traced the line down his spine from his nape to the dip at the small of his back. Oikawa’s skin looked cold. If Iwaizumi put his hand over Oikawa’s lower back and kept it there long enough, could he make heat bloom into the skin, the way Oikawa had drawn heat from him? Could he leave a warm hand print, melt the wax until his fingers connected with something real?

Oikawa moved again, pulling his shirt over his head and covering his back. Iwaizumi blinked.

“Hurry up, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa said, pivoting slightly to cast Iwaizumi a look over his shoulder. Iwaizumi felt caught in the act, like Oikawa somehow  _ knew _ he’d been staring. “We’re grabbing snacks at the convenience store on our way home, remember?”

Iwaizumi made a grunt of acknowledgement and then finished putting on his own clothes.

—

He dreamed about Oikawa that night.

The worst part was admitting that he’d had these dreams before. They’d always left him feeling uncomfortable and wrong-footed, so he’d dismissed them as nothing more than an odd one-off (two-off, three-off—) and ignored them. He didn’t  _ want  _ to think about them. 

But now he had to, didn’t he?

In the dream, Oikawa had been dressing, like in the locker room, only he wasn’t making any efforts to actually put on any clothes. He wore shorts and no shirt. He was watching Iwaizumi as Iwaizumi watched him and had this satisfied look in his eye, as though he already knew everything Iwaizumi was thinking before Iwaizumi himself did.

And then, suddenly, Oikawa kissed him.

The kiss was not chaste. The kiss went straight to filthy, all tongue and teeth and fast hot breath. In the past Iwaizumi had tried to rationalize that these dreams were more about the sensation of being kissed than Oikawa specifically, but the fact remained that Oikawa’s eyes were the ones watching him through the kiss, and Oikawa’s hair was the hair he raked his fingers through, and Oikawa’s chest was the one he splayed his hands over. He  _ touched _ Oikawa in these dreams. They kissed and his fingers brushed skin with an unthinking confidence that he’d never once had while awake.

They kissed and kissed and kissed until all the sensations became too much to sleep through. Iwaizumi woke, gasping, drenched in sweat and sporting an almost painful hard-on in his boxers. Shit.

It was fucking embarrassing. He did not want to think about what it might or might not mean—not now, not while the hot waves of shame made him wish he could just forget the whole thing. He did not want to think about this dream (or the others) in the context of Oikawa’s offer. 

But he did. He did, and the conclusions terrified him. God damn Oikawa.

Oikawa’s proposition deserved a little more consideration than he’d allocated it. 

—

Maybe he did want more from Oikawa.

—

_ Maybe he did want this. _

—

They walked to school together the next morning. They did this, sometimes, when they could both be bothered to wake up early enough. The trains might have been a little faster—or bikes. It was a nice path, though. Iwaizumi didn’t mind.

Oikawa was uncharacteristically quiet as they walked. Dawn was just breaking over the hills and the sunlight spun gold into Oikawa’s hair. He’d never noticed this detail before, but he did now. Was he always going to notice things like this? There was no going back, was there?

“Iwa-chan.”

Iwaizumi was staring. Again. He blinked and looked ahead instead, out towards the path before them. “What?” he asked. 

The pause that followed bred a festering kind of dread in the pit of his stomach. He knew what Oikawa’s question was going to be. He  _ knew _ .

“Have you thought about it?” Oikawa asked. “About what you want?”

Iwaizumi sucked in a breath and held it.  _ Yes. No. A bit. _ There were too many honest answers. He didn’t know how to put his wants into words, wasn’t sure if he would ever know. “I want…” he started, but the rest did not come. 

“I’ll tell you what I want, then,” Oikawa said eventually. He stopped in the middle of the path, and when Iwaizumi turned around to meet his eyes, Oikawa’s expression was more serious than he’d ever seen it.

“I want us to keep what we have.”

Iwaizumi saw red. “What kind of fucking game—” he spat, but Oikawa wasn’t done.

“And I want to kiss you, too,” Oikawa interrupted. Iwaizumi’s anger melted out of him just as quickly as it appeared, leaving him feeling slow and boneless—empty. Vulnerable. “I want to touch you. I want you to touch me back. Sometimes I want to call you Hajime, and I want you to call me Tooru.”

There was the smallest, almost imperceptible break in Oikawa’s voice when he spoke, a break that no one in the world could have noticed but Iwaizumi. The realization put a lump in Iwaizumi’s throat. For several moments, he couldn’t say a word.

In the distance, the sun inched higher and higher.

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi murmured. “That’s—”  _ embarrassing _ . Iwaizumi forced himself to take a breath. No. That wasn’t what he wanted to say. Not at all. His face felt hot and blood rushed in his ears, but he didn’t want to hide behind his own embarrassment anymore. Oikawa deserved more than that.  _ He _ deserved more than that, too.

“I don’t want to buy you flowers,” Iwaizumi said.

Oikawa let out a bark of surprised laughter. “I asked what you wanted, not what you don't want,” he said, and Iwaizumi glared at him until he fell quiet.

“I don’t want to make you chocolate on Valentine’s day, and I don’t want you to make me chocolate, either,” Iwaizumi continued. “I don’t want to wear coordinated outfits to Disney. I don’t want to give you pet names, but given names are okay, I guess. I’m not… I don’t think I’d like PDA very much. Not at all, actually.”

Oikawa looked at him critically. “…What are you saying?”

“I’m saying okay,” Iwaizumi replied. “Yes. I… I’m yours too. I want the things you said. I want to—touch. I want to kiss you. I think.”

Iwaizumi felt like the silence that followed might kill him.

“You think, or you know?” Oikawa asked eventually.

“Don’t be a fucking dumbass.”

“Answer the question.”

“I  _ know _ , okay? I know. I want to kiss you.”

And Oikawa— _ the bastard _ —he was waiting for that. He stepped closer to Iwaizumi until they were almost toe to toe, until Iwaizumi’s heart burst and froze and burst again. Oikawa was  _ so close _ . He could see the gold in his eyes, the sweep of his eyelashes, and Iwaizumi wanted to— He wanted—

Iwaizumi raised his hand slowly, his fingers hovering just over Oikawa’s jaw.

“You want to kiss me,” Oikawa reminded him, sounding, to his credit, only a little smug. “You’re welcome to do it now. Any time.”

“Shut up,” Iwaizumi said, and before Oikawa could respond, Iwaizumi leaned forward and pressed his lips against Oikawa’s.

In a few months, they’d graduate. In a few months, they would have more problems to work through, and more wants to communicate. For now, Iwaizumi was glad he had this. This was enough. This was  _ them,  _ and he’d hold on to what they had for as long as he could.

They walked the rest of the way to school more or less the same way they always did: side by side. If Iwaizumi’s hand brushed the back of Oikawa’s as they walked, and if their shoulders bumped a little more than usual, well—no one would notice but them. 

The path ahead was new and old—a variation on a theme. They’d play the tune as best they could, and improvise between.


End file.
